NATURAL RESOURCES
My heart is moved by all I cannot save:
so much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.
~ Adrienne Rich, Dreams of a Common Language (Norton)
To reconstitute means to build again from parts; to change the form, Adrienne Rich wrote “with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” In poesis an artist brings something new into existence, recreates history that needs new feet, constructing caissons deep in the earth that did not exist before. Through rhetorical pressure drills, we excavate, dig out stones, minerals, poisonous gases from the earth to build the bridges that connect neighbors to neighbors. In oceans and freshwater streams we have dirtied with plastics, without care or thought we wash now—obsessively. Hands vigorously reach out for the ‘other’ that has long been denied embrace. Sanitized, masked, we ache to cleanse ourselves, to purge the virus, vaccinate every body from all plagues.
Moving in and out of each other’s orbits, we share our suborbital electrons— we become light through exchange. You and I reconstitute the world, draw a line with our energy, from the core of the earth. A nuclear reaction. These poems explode, create new earth.
Love & poetry,
Indran & Sara